Atlanta police had barely finished briefing the community about a shooting inside a downtown food court Tuesday afternoon when calls began to come in about a bus hijacking.

A gunman had hijacked a commuter bus with 17 people inside and shot one of them with the passenger’s own gun, authorities said, prompting others to frantically text loved ones and call 911 for help.

But as police arrived on the scene and tried to confront the gunman, identified as 39-year-old felon Joseph Grier, the suspect held the bus driver at gunpoint and forced him to speed away, according to Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum.

The ensuing rush-hour police chase zig-zagged across highway lanes and suburban streets as the bus led authorities across at least two counties, at times careening into other cars and crossing into opposing traffic.

Inside, a passenger surreptitiously stayed on the line with 911, allowing authorities to hear the commotion, Schierbaum said. Mayor Andre Dickens said the chaos sounded like a movie scene as the suspect had “a gun to the head of a bus driver saying, ‘Don’t stop this bus or else worse will happen.’”

When the bus finally ground to a halt on a tree-lined street in the suburb of Stone Mountain, passengers streamed out and Grier was arrested without incident, police said.

A passenger found shot aboard the bus was taken to a hospital, where they later died, officials said. He was identified Wednesday as 58-year-old Ernest Byrd Jr., according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office, which ruled his death a homicide.

The suspect – who, in a twist, was at the scene of Tuesday afternoon’s shooting downtown and spoke to local news outlets moments before the hijacking – now faces a slew of charges in connection to Tuesday’s incident, according to jail records.

They include one count of murder, 14 counts of kidnapping, 13 counts of aggravated assault, one count of first-degree hijacking of a motor vehicle, one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and one count of possession of a firearm or knife during the commission of or attempt to commit certain felonies.

Grier waved his initial court appearance, according to a spokesperson for the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.

He has 19 prior felony convictions, police said, though no further details were provided. CNN has been unable to determine whether the suspect has an attorney.

How the harrowing incident unfolded

_{Credit: Ben Hendren for the AJC}

The hijacked Gwinnett County Transit bus is part of a web of commuter routes that bring people to and from Atlanta’s sprawling suburbs, including passenger Paulette Gilbert, who called her husband from inside the bus as the chase began to unfold.

Paulette Gilbert seemed stunned and frightened as she described a man who had boarded the bus and began acting strangely, said her husband, Johnny Gilbert. She said the man got into a confrontation with another passenger and shot them, possibly in the leg.

“She said the guy got on the bus and seemed kinda crazy,” Gilbert said, recounting his wife’s story. “He was being disruptive or getting on people’s nerves,” he added.

Grier was “engaging with passengers” when he got into a fight with one of them, a male, who pulled a gun, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“Grier took the gun from the passenger and began threatening passengers with it,” the GBI said in a news release, citing preliminary information from its investigation. “Grier then shot the passenger and ordered the bus driver to flee the scene while threatening passengers with the gun.”

At around 4:30 p.m., police received the first 911 call from a passenger reporting that a gunman was holding the bus hostage on Ivan Allen Boulevard and that there may have been shots fired, Schierbaum said. Then the line went silent.

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